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The summer was passing at Thorpe very much as other summers had passed,
and yet with the difference that dogs our footsteps whether we will or
no. The grass waves, the forget-me-nots look up from the brink of cool
brown streams, the roses are as sweet as ever,--we wonder as we touch
them how there can be a change and what it is, but we know in our hearts
that it has come, and that things can never more be what they once have
been.
As for Anthony, all things considered, he seemed to be leading a
pleasant life enough. There was bright, settled weather, and the
neighbourhood had taken one of those sudden freaks of gaiety with which
such neighbourhoods are occasionally seized; dinners and picnics and
cricket-matches succeeded one another rapidly, people came to stay with
each other, glad to escape from the heat of London to these pretty
country-places, where they could lie under the shadow of great elms, and
pick dewy fruit in old-fashioned gardens. It was an easy, charming
existence, with a busy idleness about it, which had an indescribable
delight so long as the sun would shine. Anthony was wanted for all the
little festivities, he was asked to stay here, to dine there; the
Milmans, the Hunters, the Bennetts, the Davieses, had each some
attraction to offer, and young ladies who were ready to encourage Mr
Miles's attentions. By and by little echoes of rumours began to be
heard. At one picnic he had talked to no one but Miss Lovell, at
another dinner-party he had devoted himself for the whole evening to
Miss Milman. Winifred had been there, and had seen it for herself, and,
indeed, Anthony, when he indulged in these flirtations, generally
contrived to be near Winifred. Not that a spirit of mischief prompted
him on such occasions, or anything beyond a light-hearted enjoyment of
the present moment. He liked the pretty flatteries of manner, the
little attentions, which the young girls were not unwilling to lavish
upon him,--liked to feel himself courted and appealed to,--liked also,
or something more than liked, that Winifred should be near him, that he
might look at her, listen to her at the very moment he was turning away,
touch something she had touched, unconsciously compare her with her
companions. Unconsciously, I repeat, for, although many problems were
puzzling him at this moment, he was thinking least of all about his own
heart. He did very much what he liked, and if it pleased him to talk to
Miss Milman and to sit near Winifred, he talked and he sat. That was
all.
That was all, and no one could have said a word against it if it had
been always so. He had no intention of neglecting Winifred; but to a
girl who loves, unintentional neglect is more cruelly wounding than any
other. Each day worked with a sort of slow torture upon her, the more
so that her cheeks burnt with shame, when she even acknowledged it to
herself. She was in high spirits,--or so it seemed. She fancied
herself that all sweetness and gentleness had died out of her heart,
leaving bitter ashes behind. When she spoke to Anthony it was
laughingly and lightly, only every now and then there would descend a
sharp cut, or one that she thought sharp, poor child, and would repeat
over to herself with a dreary satisfaction, while she invented other
sayings more terrible, which the time never came for uttering. After
all, they were not so severe as she intended, for such weapons did not
belong to her by nature, and she used them as tremblingly as a woman
will fire off a gun that she expects to explode in her hands. As often
as not, Anthony did not notice these little attacks; he noticed more
what she did not say, the pleasant things which fell so trippingly from
others' lips, to Winifred's disdain. Feeling as if Anthony were
slipping away altogether from the pleasant, familiar intercourse which
had been enough to satisfy her while it lasted, and which, therefore,
she fancied would have satisfied her forever, these sweet summer days,
in which all the world was making holiday, were to her full of restless
misery, to which she dared neither give a name nor a cause, and over
which she shed the bitterest tears that her life as yet had known.
No one saw the struggle. It would have added tenfold to her suffering
if they had done so, for she had too much of her grandmothers undaunted
spirit not to be at times fierce and impatient with herself, and her
very prayers were not so often that she might be loved again, as that
she might cease to love, and so have done with the pain. She had no
mother. The Squire, when he was in his most jovial moods, would strike
Anthony on the back and ask who was the last flame, but his own
daughter's name had never occurred to him. Mrs Miles was distracted
between hopes and fears, represented by Miss Milman and Miss Davies.
Marion was taken up with Marmaduke, who was at Thorpe, and who for his
part was absorbed in thoughts of Mr Tregennas and Trenance. After this
one step had been gained, he was greedy for a clearer declaration of the
old man's intentions, and waited restlessly for a repetition of the
invitation to himself and Anthony. Yet when it arrived, he said
jealously to Marion,--
"Why should Anthony go? What has he to do with it? Is he trying to
come over the old man?"
Even she flamed a little. "You should know him better. There was never
any one in the world who cared less for money," she said angrily.
One wonders sometimes how many misjudgments will rise up and face us one
day. Anthony was so far from thinking the thoughts that Marmaduke put
into his head, that he was a good deal vexed at the summons which took
him away from the pleasant little round into which he had fallen. But
he consoled himself with grumbling, and the Milmans insisted upon
putting off their picnic until his return.
"They'll turn the boy's head between them," said Mr Robert Mannering
wrathfully to himself. He was in his garden, alternately attending to
some newly budded roses, and doing his utmost to discomfit the
imperturbable Stokes. The little ugly red-faced man guessed better than
other people what was going on, and perhaps saw more clearly. "Confound
those women!" he said ungallantly. "They do their best to spoil any man
they take a fancy to! Stokes, I presume you suppose these unhappy buds
are to undo their own bandages? I should like to tie you up for a week,
and see how you'd feel at the end of it. And those seedling carnations
are in a disgraceful condition."
"There bain't wan o' them worth the soil he grows in," asserted Stokes
with round emphasis.
"Not worth! Pray do you know where the seed came from, and how much I
gave for it?"
"I shouldn't be surprised but what you might ha' given anything they
asked of you. I can't help that, Mr Robert. There's a lot of
impostors in gardining like as there is in anything else, unless you
looks pretty sharp. And they thyur caernations is rubbish."
"That's your ignorance. I should like to know how much you knew about
gardening until I taught you."
"I knowed rubbish--always," said Stokes, with an air of decision which
fairly drove Mr Robert off the field. He walked towards the house
across the short fine turf, all unlike the Vicarage lawn with its
intruding daisies and dandelions, smiling a little to himself over his
own discomfiture.
"They are worthless, I believe," he said, "only I didn't think the
fellow would have the wit to find it out. Who are these coming in at
the gate? The Chesters, if I'm not mistaken." And away hurried Mr
Robert to receive his visitors.
"The girls got hold of me, and would make me walk over with them," said
the Squire, pulling Bessie's hair, and talking loudly. "What are you
doing in the garden, eh? Your hobby, ain't it, Mannering? I'll lay
sixpence, though, you don't show me a finer dish of peas than we had for
dinner yesterday. What were they called, Bessie? Bessie's the one for
remembering all the fine names."
"Come and dine with us one day, and I'll see what we can do. Will you
say Thursday?--unless Miss Winifred has some engagement."
"No," said Winifred, with a little weariness in her voice, which Mr
Mannering detected at once. "The Milmans were to have had a picnic on
that day, but it is to wait."
"Because Anthony is going away," put in Bessie in an aggrieved tone.
"They want young Miles to marry the girl Milman, and so they can't make
enough of him," said the Squire. "That's the long and short of it."
"Ah, I don't believe he has any such notion in his head," replied Mr
Robert, manfully. "He'll not be marrying just yet, though other people
will marry him a dozen times over."
"Perhaps not, perhaps not; I don't know that I should expect to see him
do anything so sensible. Old Milman isn't over-troubled with brains,
but they carry him along very fairly, and he's as sound a Tory as any
man in the county. It might be the making of the young fellow to marry
into a good steady holdfast family like that, and get some of his
harebrained notions knocked out of him," said the Squire, who was
becoming very sore with Anthony's arguments.
"O, his notions will come all right by and by!" said Mr Robert
pacifically. "People can't all think and live in just the same
grooves."
"More's the pity. I don't see that the new grooves are any the better."
"Well, perhaps sometimes they're not so much worse as we think them.
And how does Bessie get on without Miss Palmer?"
"Why, she plagues us all," said the Squire, with great satisfaction.
"She's always running out into the fields after me, when she ought to be
at her lessons, or her sampler, I tell her. Winifred's got no end of
trouble with her. And now she's bothering my life out to go into
Aunecester twice a week, to the School of Art I suppose she must go, but
who's to take her, I should like to know?"
"You, papa, of course," said Bessie decidedly. "You are always as glad
as you can be to go to Aunecester."
"There, you hear. That's how she serves her father," said Mr Chester,
chuckling, and pulling her hair again. "No, thank you, we'll not come
in, Henderson's waiting to speak to me about his farm. Where's
Mannering?"
"He's driven over to dine at the Hunters'."
"What a man he is for society."
"Yes, he likes it, and it does him good," said Mr Robert quietly.
"That's what people always say about things that please them. I tried
it for a good bit upon salmon, but it didn't do. Had to give it up.
Well, girls, now you've had your say, I hope you're satisfied, and will
let me go home in peace. You're a lucky man, Mannering, to have your
own way without being plagued for it. Here's Bessie, now: a fellow will
have a pretty handful that gets her,--bless you, she'll not let him say
his soul's his own," added the Squire, in high good-humour, making signs
behind his youngest daughter's back.
"How is the Farleyense, Mr Mannering?" asked Winifred, lingering.
"I really think that, if possible, it is in more perfect condition than
when you did it the honour to come to look at it."
"And Stokes has not tried any experiments?"
"He knows that if he did it would cost him his place. No, Miss
Winifred, there is a point behind which even the easiest master must
intrench himself."
The girl sighed a little. Her father and sister were strolling along
the lane outside the gates, and the Squire's loud laugh came to them
scarcely softened by the short distance. The rich fulness of August
seemed to weigh somewhat heavily in the air; the hedge-row elms stood in
thick unenlightened masses against the sky; the garden was a little
parched and exhausted by its very profusion of flowers, the scent of the
jessamine was almost oppressive in its richness; it was one of those
days in which, without any perceptible change, the knowledge forces
itself upon us that the change is there, and that something is gone from
us.
"And do you still carry the key in your pocket?" said Winifred, with a
faint smile.
"No, no, the house is open. Will you come and see it again?"
"Winifred!" called the Squire from the other side of the wall.
"Not now, thank you. I mustn't keep my father."
She spoke hurriedly, but walked lingeringly towards the gate, and Mr
Mannering remained stationary for some moments after she had
disappeared. "I wonder what is making her take such an interest in the
Farleyense," he said to himself. "The plant is a picture, to be sure,
but still--when I think of it--and why should I keep the key in my
pocket?--Why--what an old fool I am!--I had forgotten all about Anthony,
and no doubt the poor girl wanted to hear a word or two more about him.
He's off somewhere to-day, I dare say, and going into Cornwall
to-morrow,--the best place for him, too, if he doesn't know what's good
for him; and there she is fretting over all these confounded reports,
and thinking I could have said a word or two to comfort her. I've a
great mind not to look at the Farleyense for a week. However, perhaps
I'd better just go and give it a glance, to make sure that Stokes hasn't
been meddling."